- miko || 巫女 -

This month Ipsy was definitely more skin-care heavy than usual... not my thing, so unsurprisingly this bag wasn't really a hit for me. That said, within the scope of what could have been picked for me, the choices weren't awful. I'm just not really all that interested in "add this to your routine!" type products, because I'm never going to do that.

Here's what I got this month:



The best thing about this month is the bag: It's a great little canvas bag with a sew-wide base (T said this was squaring corners? I don't know terms, I feel like home ec wasn't that effective for me). It's already in use as my new camera accessories bag. The Ipsy + leaf print is on the front and the back is blank.

( Here's the products ... no pictures of me this month. )

Overall, not a great bag. I hope to see some actually pigmented makeup in the next bag, and no more exfoliators. But thumbs up on the bag itself, super cute and useful.

Date received: 2014-05-12
Cost: $14.95 + conversion
Value: $48

I read this book because it was available free as an ebook, but I can't really recommend it. It's a coming of age / discovery of magic novel with a backdrop of gang violence and... elves. Uh. Honestly, I feel like if it had gone with just the gangs + magic, I probably would have liked it more. The whole book never quite fit together in my mind.

Point of interest, it is a lot more ethnically diverse than the average novel, so I guess it has that going for it. And I did finish it, even if I felt it was somewhat lackluster. The hook, such as it is, is a teenage runaway discovering that she has the ability to heal people. Gangs want her, elves inexplicably want her, and some random lady from social services also happens to be a magic user who wants to help her. It's... something.

I don't quite recall how I stumbled upon London Falling - most likely a blog post? This is the hazard of putting books on a "for later" list and not getting them until months after. It's the first of a series - the second of which will come out in a few days (May 22, presuming North American release is the same time as the UK one).

London Falling is a... hm. It self-describes as an urban fantasy, but I wouldn't call it that. If I had to mush genres together to get this, I'd say it's a police procedural supernatural horror. I've ordered it that way because it really is a police procedural first (the fact that the crime is supernatural in origin isn't immediately known - the officers grow into the knowledge with the reader), and I've added the "horror" genre because it's darker than the average urban fantasy. There's a feeling of reality even in the frankly unbelievable because the characters are with you on it, and that speaks more to horror than fantasy as a genre.

Man, the book is good. The writing really takes you into it - I have strong visuals in my head (which is pretty unusual for me - oddly, I think the last one was another Brit police + magic novel: Ben Aaronovitch's Midnight Riot) from it, and it's sticking with me despite not writing this review immediately after reading. It's perhaps not a surprise, in retrospect, to find that Paul Cornell writes for television and comics as well. The writing feels rich in visuals without being overly described.

For me, knowing I have no problem with supernatural as a genre, I almost felt it a pity that I knew about it in advance... I would have liked to discover it in the novel rather than on the cover. Sorry I'm not giving you that chance either, but it's really unavoidable when you're holding the book because of all the blurbs and description. Perhaps it's for the best, though, because I could see someone who wanted a "real" story being totally frustrated when it goes off into the supernatural.

Oh dear... sneak peeks are happening for the May bag, and here I am having not posted anything about April! Life got busy (and I wanted to get my Diablo characters maxed again...), but I did take pictures and try everything at least once, so here we go!

The bag for this month is a dark purple, slightly taller than average and a thinner outer material. Nothing terribly notable; it has a record player image on it.



( And here are the products! )

Overall, I was shockingly pleased with the perfume this month, but the rest was fairly bland. I'm sure I'll use the eyeliner and eyeshadow, though, and I didn't mind trying the exfoliator... the tinted lip balm is a bit of a bust, but may have some use combining with other products.

The bloom is somewhat off the rose for receiving these bags, which is sort of what I expected... I just don't love makeup that much, and it starts to pile up quickly since I don't wear it often. I'm enjoying the excuse to get better at using it, but once I hit a comfortable level of skill, I don't see myself continuing with this. For the moment, I've updated my profile to include more things to see about some variety, and we'll see how the next month or two goes.

Date received: 2014-04-16
Cost: $14.95 + conversion
Value: $60

Princess of the Midnight Ball is a retelling of the fairytale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". I'm not familiar with the original tale, and I didn't look it up before reading the book (though I did just read the wikipedia page now).

This was a enjoyable young adult novel. It's not particularly special - in fact, I assumed it was pretty true to the original story because it didn't seem to go outside of what I'd expected - but it's well written and has likeable characters. I'm personally a bit disappointed in any retelling where the princess(es) don't save themselves these days... while one of the princesses does make an effort at one time, the story isn't really about them - it's about the male protagonist.

Having now read what the original tale is like, the author did change it so that the princesses weren't actually malicious (they're cursed instead - faerie tale rather than fairytale, if that makes sense). While that means you're cheering for everyone except the curser, I now can't help but feel like I would have been more excited to have read one where the princesses turned out to be the villains.

War Maid's Choice is the fourth (and most recent) book in the War God series. Up front, I like this series and recommend it... but since I've already talked about that for three books, take that as the baseline while I complain about a few things.

This book generally follows three character viewpoints: Bazhell, the lead for all of the books and champion of the war god; Leanna, who was a teenager when we last saw her and is now an adult war maid; and the villain of the moment. Like previous books, the villain sections remain a bit of a slog - they're where I most often put the book down, because I obviously don't like the character. It's not my favourite form of exposition.

The relationship between Bazhell and Leanna (you may recall my cringing at it while she was younger) is still incredibly meh. At least it's not really drawn out, but I didn't believe them as a pairing and it reads a bit creepy the same way Sparhawk/Ehlana did (if you're unfamiliar: young girl puts designs on older warrior and eventually "traps" him into marriage as an adult). Not as bad, but... eh.

Overall, the series may have hit its peak already for me. There were to many characters with similar names to try to keep straight, the stakes are getting unreasonably high and the battles unpicturably large. It's pretty clear there's another book planned to follow, and I'll probably read it, but it's getting too high fantasy for me if this is any indication.

This is the sixth game in the Professor Layton puzzle game series. I've played... most of the others, though I think I missed one or maybe two. I picked up this game and promptly played through it in all my spare time: you're looking at about 30-35 hours of gameplay, plus the daily puzzle downloads.

If you've played previous games, this game is exactly what you'd expect. No big changes to the mechanics, just different puzzles/minigames and a new story. I didn't find the story all that compelling, although it was the culmination of the last three games... it had the "go to five places to collect fives objects" gameplay that's so common as to be dull. Thankfully, the puzzles remain fun as always - only a few "gotcha" ones, most of the rest were true puzzles. I found them perhaps a bit easy, other than the types that I've never enjoyed (sliding tile puzzles, for instance).

There's a new Streetpass minigame that is not at all obvious - I failed to activate it until I was already done the game, because the icon seriously looks like a "help" button, so I never clicked it, and it's not lined up with the other minigames. Weird design choice. Anyway, once you do find it, you can click around to find objects on screen as sort of a treasure hunt, and then set up three-item lists to share with people you streetpass for them to find. It's not a functionality that's been at all useful to me: I don't think I've streetpassed a single other person playing the game. It's a bit surprising, actually, since the last one was pretty popular. Thankfully, the "demo" hunt gives you some points so you can get the last object for your collection... it was troubling me to have 19/20, which is why I eventually looked up and found out about this.

3D wise, I thought it was handled pretty nicely in this game. When you search an area, the view scrolls around with you nicely and if you can handle having the 3D on, it's pleasantly done. The game doesn't require it, though, although one of the types of daily puzzle is stupidly hard to parse without it on (the one where you knock over rocks - can't tell the stacks apart very well without the 3D).

Overall, solid Layton game and I'm looking forward to the daily puzzles getting hard enough to be interesting. The early ones are kinda meh. If you played the last game, the daily puzzles have changed up for new mechanics with a couple exceptions (the alchemy one is still there, as is the laser knights).

I'm just coming off of a terrible headache today (time change side effect? Or just the ticking timebomb of migraines in the family, I don't know), so please excuse if this isn't the most coherent. I can't sleep more at this point, so better to be trying to do something.

So, Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I've finally taken this game out of my 3DS after 80+ hours of gameplay, which is sort of ridiculous, but it's a game that doesn't really "finish". Even so, I haven't actually unlocked everything, and I'll probably pick it up a couple times a month to catch seasonal bugs & fish.

I think I've jumped too far ahead. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a kids town-builder game, where you're the mayor of a town of anthropomorphic animals. You earn money ("bells") for selling various things, you can collect furniture, insects, fish, fossils and clothing, and you make friends with the townsfolk by doing favours that they ask of you - simple things, like getting them something they want (fruit, a bug, whatever) or visiting their houses. For a price, you can buy new things, upgrade your house and build new buildings for the town.

It's... a little inane, and tends to re-explain things, but it's cute and calm to play. I found it hit me the same way dailies in MMOs do - because there were certain things I could do once per day only, I would pull out my 3DS for about a half hour a day just to make sure I did them. As it went on, I started running out of those things, which is why I finally put it down (well, that and the fact that I have other 3DS games I want to play). I gather there's multiplayer and such, but that's outside of my interest in a game like this. I was happy to idle around prettifying my town, helping ridiculous animals (Olaf is the best, FYI), and just generally being goofy.

So: quite enjoyable, but maybe a bit too much of a pull for a collector-type like myself. Even though I wanted to play other games, I would end up thinking "oh, AC is in there, I'll just dig up the fossils for today..." and then never get to it. It also makes you feel kinda guilty when you don't play every day, so keep that in mind if that's likely to bother you.

Dream Chasers is the sixth book in the Inspector Green series. This book started out a bit weak, I thought, and then improved to the point where I'd say I quite enjoyed it.

The weak start seemed mostly because it opened prior to the crimes that would be the core of the investigation... and that half the viewpoint was from a civilian trying to investigate. It was a bit off putting in what is normally a straight police procedural, almost feeling like a awkward cozy until mid way through.

Also, I spent some time being a bit miffed about the bad description of Hog's Back Park. She describes the fence around the falls as being something that could be bypassed with a teenager's determination and ingenuity... when we all know that it can be defeated by a tiny effort of throwing your leg over it, or by walking a couple minutes to a spot where there is no fence. It just made the detective seem kind of stupid, especially with the cover more accurately illustrating the "fence" on the other side of the falls that is pretty much just a hand rail. Plus, a subsequent description of the park having hundreds of places a body could be hidden seemed exaggerated: there are so many people all over the park in the summer, and since they weren't including the larger parks on either side, the less-travelled areas are pretty minor.

Despite my harping on it, those were pretty minor issues in an otherwise good mystery novel. I enjoyed the hockey connection as well, and this was set just after the team's playoff run ended. Very much captured what I remember of the city that year. Also pleasantly, the main character's life, although not perfect, is also not falling apart in this. I've read a few too many police procedurals like that lately.

This is the seventh book in the Liss MacCrimmon Scottish Mystery series. These books are cozies, with the hook being the main character's Scottish roots / obsession... but actually, by this point in the series there's only a token shot at it with a couple little references. The books are set in Maine, after all, so it's always been a bit of an odd thing.

This novel was perfectly pleasant. I enjoyed reading it; it offered me no discomfort; and it wasn't tragically silly or stupid. But, as I'm sure you can tell from that sentence, it also didn't shine as anything special - just a typical book further into a cozy series, where you enjoy the familiar characters and nothing too horrific happens.

Best part: the main character's hilarious speculations about the mystery. Worst part: the main character's utter lack of imagination about a much more clear situation. This isn't much of a spoiler, but I didn't think it was terribly realistic for someone to be utterly shocked when things moved around a house she thought was locked up... right after she had to take the key away from someone she didn't trust at all. Because someone untrustworthy would *never* get a duplicate cut, right? This wasn't the case, incidentally, but it bothered me that she didn't even consider it... just seemed baffled as to any possibilities at all.